Sick Like Me (Sick Like #1)

Chapter 4

FOUR

JULY 2021

My arms and legs moved as the thumping music of an upbeat song from my workout playlist drowned out all other noises within the gym from the baby blue earphones plugged securely into my ears.

Despite the happy sounding music pounding into my brain and the buzz of energy coursing through my veins, my mood remained secretly sour. I felt the constant sting in my nose, and I looked up as I blinked away the tears each time they began to fill my eyes with the threat of spilling over.

My father wasn’t necessarily choosing to ignore my bad mood, but he had yet to notice how quiet I was in the car on the way and he seemed unfazed by me ignoring his in-between-set chats when he walked past my machine to get to a weight machine he wanted to use next.

It had been around 17 hours since I last heard from him , and while I knew allowing a man who couldn’t even find a few seconds to reply to my message—you’re telling me he didn’t have to use the bathroom and didn’t scroll on his phone during any break in his day?—to affect my moods was a low blow, I was stuck in a cycle that begged for his attention and mourned his presence when he lacked at replying to me.

The numbers on the machine flashed as it showed I had reached my goal of 30 minutes. I was in no mood to continue so I decided it best to go to the bathroom to try to gain some clarity with my thoughts.

If I could just stand in the mirror and give myself the pep talk I would give Pey if she was in my position, then I could probably get on with the rest of the session just fine, I tried to convince myself.

I picked up my phone and water bottle, then cleaned and wiped down the equipment as I did every other time I used it. I walked to the doors of the gym and paused my steps to allow the glass doors to slide open. Once open, I placed my cleaning spray down and walked out into the foyer area.

I noticed from behind the front desk, an old swimming teacher of mine was passing some papers to a small kid to reveal they had passed their most recent ‘metre tests’. I smiled sadly at the image and remembered my own experience at that age.

At the age when men meant nothing to me. At a time when I didn’t have this sickness awake inside me, clawing at my skin to be freed.

The doors to the sports centre were wide open, allowing the cool air of the ensuing night to fill the corridor. I turned to my right and found the doors to the bathrooms. I walked to the doors and slammed one of them open much more aggressive than I was intending.

I let out a small sob as I turned the corner in the bathroom to the nearest stall. I threw my phone and bottle down on top of the wooden shelf placed above the toilet, and then I rushed to slap a hand over my mouth as my tears hit me like a waterfall.

I didn’t think I was actually going to cry, I thought I was going to have to wipe a tear away at most and be good with that. But my body apparently needed to let it out without any warning or a chance for me to fight the feeling.

I then turned and sat on the closed toilet seat, closing my eyes as I tried to will myself to stop being so fucking pathetic. But they kept coming, nothing was going to stop them.

I heard my phone buzz from behind me and reached back with my free hand to grab it, assuming my father had noticed my absence. I checked and found two messages, one from ten minutes ago that I had never seen, and one from now.

My eyes widened at the one from ten minutes ago, my sobs turning into weak whimpers and then sniffles as I unlocked my phone, my vision blurry until I blinked to let loose the pooling tears.

I bit the inside of my lip and read over the word.

Kota Vernon : Hello.

That was all he had to say after he basically ignored my messages for hours on end? I wanted to throw my phone in a huff, but I decided it best not to as instead I closed off his message and read the most recent one—the one from my father checking in on me.

Me : All good, just gone to the toilet a second. Stomach pains back again.

Sure enough the one grey tick turned into two, then mere seconds later they turned blue to reveal my father read my response.

Dad: You can come get the keys and sit in the car if you want. I won’t be long now.

I smiled at his words, then closed off the screen. I stood from the toilet seat and reached to grab my water bottle before I exited the toilet stall to assess the damage crying had done to my face.

Sure enough, my eyes and nose were red, usual obvious tell tale signs that I had cried. But fuck it, I could brush it off on my stomach pains and pretend to my father that it wasn’t over the man who was starting to piss me off with his existence, or sometimes lack thereof.

Me: Hi

Was the simple response I sent him before I locked my screen and placed my phone back in my pocket, then I walked out of the bathrooms back to the gym to grab the keys off my father.

“I think I’ve grown to hate men,” I stated the second I threw myself into my best friend’s sofa. Her parents had gone on some trip to go visit her older sibling at university, so Peyton Summers had a free house that I was going to abuse for my emotional breakdown.

Peyton was the kind of friend who felt like a sister, one I never got the chance to have. I could walk into her house and raid the fridge with no fear of judgement. I could go to her bed and have a nap, and she would wordlessly join me.

She was everything I had ever needed, something I had no idea I was missing until she entered my life.

“I thought you hated them anyway. God knows I do,” She stated, letting out a huff of air from her nose as she held the controller of her Xbox tight in her hands, her eyes trained on the screen as she decided the best method of killing someone in her game without being caught.

I watched the TV with my face feeling dead, my hands shaking as I pulled my fleece blanket up to my neck. “I did. Well, I mean I do… But…” I began, but I found it hard to find the words I wanted to express.

The room was silent for a few tense moments, as if we both knew the feeling but lacked the ability to vocalise it.

But then finally Peyton spoke up, breaking the silence.

“But you thought this one was different,” She finished for me, to which I let out a small sigh but nodded my head in agreement. She always just knew what I was thinking and how I was feeling—so much so I believed her to be more myself than I was.

“Have you replied to his message yet?” She asked as I unlocked my phone to stare at the ‘one word’ reply.

Kota Vernon: Wyd

It had been four hours since his response. I had showered, had food and got picked up by Peyton in that time. And no further messages came from him. No excuses, no apologies, nothing.

“No, but I was about to,” I replied truthfully, knowing if I lied she would sniff it out like a trained police dog on a drug bust. “I just keep thinking that if he could go that long without replying, it shows how little I matter to him. He just wants sex and it’s pretty obvious now.”

I was in the wrong for this, as he told me from the offset he wasn’t looking for anything serious and wanted some fun, however I still deluded myself that maybe I was going to be so great to talk to, he would end his dating ban for me.

I did his every command over text. I sent photos I had never sent other men, and I had replied to his messages in the way he had request. He wanted me to sit down and bark, to be submissive. And I followed his requests without much fight.

I had hoped that was enough to make him want me. But clearly, I was wrong.

Peyton nodded slowly, no room for coddling when it came to the truth at hand. “I’m not going to lie to you, you know that’s not my style to fake comfort you,” She began, a warning.

She turned her head to look at me, trying to gage my response. When I blinked and nodded, she paused her game and sucked in a deep breath. She looked as if she was debating with herself, if she should really lay it all out and risk me crying in the end.

It didn’t matter if she said what she wanted to or not, because truthfully I would likely end up crying with or without her harsh truths. Especially should we crack out the wine and the sad girl playlists.

She turned to place her feet into her slippers before she stood. She picked up her discarded fleece blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders before she held her hand out to me.

I gently placed my hand in hers and stood, rushing to get my own slippers on before I let our hands drop as she led me through the house to the open French doors in her kitchen which led to her garden.

We stepped outside, the stars shining bright in the sky. I looked up, smiling at the view before I decided it best to look straight ahead again as we climbed the steep concrete steps leading up the side of her garden to each levelled off section.

We walked to the very top one, a wall along the edge of her garden. We then walked along the wall and found a space in the middle to sit down.

The cold summer night air whipped around us and I shivered, pulling my blanket even tighter. We both leant back, our eyes locked on the sky above us as we watched the stars twinkle and the overhead plane lights flash.

“I want you to know you can cry at any time around me, you don’t have to keep up with this whole ‘I’m strong and I can handle it on my own’ bullshit,” Peyton said, her voice small but still loud enough to cause a lump to form in my throat.

“This isn’t what you want to hear,” She continued. “I know that, but I want you to know this is coming from a place of love and support. You don’t have to do what I say, but I’m sharing this from experience. I want you to be back to your old happy self, not this shell of a girl who has to beg a man for the bare minimum attention.”

I swallowed, nodding. She was right. I knew she was. She knew she was. Hell, my father would have even agreed she was if he had been there. I let out a huff of air before I took in a deep breath.

“I shouldn’t reply, should I?” I asked, the feeling heavy in my chest. “I don’t want to ghost him.”

“You want different things, babe,” She said her hand coming to rest on my shoulder. Her fingers moved slowly in a soothing motion. “You want him as a man who wants to spend time with you, get to know you. He wants you in his bed, nothing more. It’s not a good match.”

I nodded slowly, my eyes welling with tears. My vision turned blurry as I sucked in a deep breath again, through my nose that time. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t find the words.

“Want to hand me your phone? I can block him for you,” She offered, moving her arm from my shoulder to outstretch.

I gave another nod, placing the device in her hand without a second thought. She took it with a small smile that I caught in the corner of my eyes. I kept my eyes on the sky, not wanting to watch as she unlocked my phone.

I let out a soft sob as I watched her thumb move along my screen. I closed my eyes, feeling tears track from my eyelashes down my cheeks. She moved the phone to her left hand, then used her right hand to find mine as she tangled our fingers together. “I know you liked him babes, but you deserve better. We’ll find you better.”

She locked my phone after a few seconds, then placed it on the wall beside her before she pulled my arm and brought me close to her in a tight hug. “You feel like this for a man you’ve never even met. Imagine how amazing you’ll feel when you finally find that one man who will feel for you just as much as you do now about him .”

I appreciated that she didn’t use his name. I felt like if she had, it would have been a punch to the stomach which would have ended in me grabbing for my phone and unblocking him only to apologise .

He wouldn’t even know I blocked him, not unless he tried to message me again. Which I had the sinking feeling that he may not do that. I suspected he would just assume I was never going to reply again, and that was going to be the end of us.

We ended quietly on a Friday night in the July of 2021, at 21:54.

It was the only thing I had control over when it came to him. I controlled when we ended. At least I could say I was strong enough for that.

“I never want anyone to feel like this for me,” I whispered, feeling her rest her cheek on the top of my head as I pressed my face into her shoulder. “I never want a man to ever fall in love with me. I will just hurt him, worse than how I feel now. I know it, I know I will.”

“Dating is a game of chance sometimes. You’ll fall in love and sometimes it’ll stick. Other times, it will end. Sometimes with warning, and sometimes out of nowhere. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.” She paused, as if remembering the heartbreak one of her boyfriends gave her in recent years.

But then I felt her lips tilt up against my hair. I realised she had gotten over it, and she had actually lived with him. If she could get over a man who she lived with breaking her heart, then I would end up just fine.

Between him and I, there was no promise of commitment. There was nothing between us save for me begging for his attention, and him sometimes giving it as and when he felt bored or lonely enough to do so.

“But you know what? You’re always going to have me,” Peyton slowly rocked our bodies as her thumb rubbed the back of my hand slowly.

“You’re going to be okay,” She whispered a promise after minutes of silence. Somehow, I felt like she was saying it not just for my sake, but her own too .

“I know,” I whispered back, not entirely sure I believed it myself. But at least it helped eased her concerns about me.

Well, for the rest of the night at least. At least during our wine and song sessions, I kept a smile on my face—admittedly a fake one—and my lips never once paused to stop singing.

I knew in the middle of the night when I slept in the spare bedroom alone, the blanket cold on my skin, that I would end up crying silently into the pillow. But that was something I would just have to handle on my own.

I had to make sure she didn’t worry about me more than she needed to. Stress was far from what she needed at that time.